Minutes after midnight on this date in 1996, Georgia electrocuted Larry Lonchar

Ten grand in the red on gambling debts, Lonchar in 1986 raided the home of the bookie he owed and gunned down that bookie, his female partner, and his two sons. (One of the sons survived by playing dead.)

A DeKalb county 911 call recorded the horrifying last moments of Margaret Sweat:

911: DeKalb Emergency 911.

Caller: Police.

911: What address?

Caller: [redacted]

911: What’s the problem?

Caller: Everybody’s been shot.

911: Who’s been shot?

Caller: Me — and —

911: With a gun?

Caller: Yes.

911: Who did it?

Caller: I don’t know.

911: Is that a house or an apartment?

Caller: It’s a condominium. . . .

911: Okay. Now you say everybody’s been shot, I already got you help on the way, but when you say everybody’s been shot, how many?

Lonchar had little stomach to fight a death sentence he acknowledged deserving — an execution date in 1993 had been averted only at the last moment when his brother’s suicide threat induced Lonchar to reluctantly pick up his appeals — and by the end he was holding out strangely for only a late delay. It seems that he wanted to donate his kidneys, but the wrack of the electrical chair promised to damage the tissue past using. That situation had even led Georgia lawmaker Doug Teper to introduce legislation to conduct executions by guillotine: say what you will about the iconic French razor, it’s easy on the organs.

The spectacle of legal beheadings was spared America, then and since — though who knows what may someday come of the ongoing breakdown of the lethal injection process.

Lonchar’s execution was witnessed by British human rights attorney Clive Stafford Smith, who had come to represent him: Smith wrote about the experience for the Guardianhere.